The Sail Maker Stitching Canvas for the Last Wooden Schooners
At Ratsey and Lapthorn in Cowes, Isle of Wight, sailmakers have been cutting and stitching canvas since 1790.
2025-01-31
WA
William Ashford
114 articles
Showing 61–80 of 114 articles
How One French Atelier Produces the World's Finest Enamel Dials
Donze Cadrans in Le Locle, Switzerland, produces grand feu enamel dials for virtually every major Swiss watch brand, from Patek Philippe and Vacheron Constantin to independents like F.
2025-01-15
The Pewter Workshop That Outlasted Two World Wars
AE Williams, founded in Birmingham in 1779, is the oldest pewter workshop in the world still operating from its original premises.
2025-01-08
How Heritage Brands Protect Trade Secrets Across Centuries
Chartreuse liqueur has been produced by Carthusian monks using the same secret recipe since 1737, a formula known in its entirety by only two monks at any given time.
2025-01-07
The Quilters Working at the Intersection of Geometry and Warmth
The quilts of Gee's Bend, Alabama, created by African American women in an isolated community along the Alabama River, were exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2002 and compared by critics to the work of Henri Matisse and Paul Klee.
2025-01-05
Inside a Sheffield Steel Forge
At Taylor's Eye Witness in Sheffield, a drop forge stamps a blade blank from high-carbon steel with several hundred tons of force.
2024-12-15
How a Boot Gets Resoled and Why It Should
At the Red Wing Heritage repair shop in Red Wing, Minnesota, a pair of Iron Rangers arrives with soles worn through.
2024-12-12
How Cork Is Harvested and Why It Matters
In Portugal's Alentejo region, cork bark harvesting occurs during a six-week summer window.
2024-12-10
The Last Great Umbrella Makers of London
James Smith and Sons has occupied the same corner of New Oxford Street since 1857.
2024-11-30
Inside the Workshop: A Brooklyn Perfumer
At D.
2024-11-17
Inside the Workshop: A Florentine Leather Artisan
In the Oltrarno district of Florence, Stefano Bemer's workshop occupies a fifteenth-century palazzo where vegetable-tanned leather permeates every room.
2024-11-16
Inside the Workshop: A Savile Row Tailor
At Anderson and Sheppard on Savile Row, the cutting room occupies the first floor, where natural light falls across tables holding bolts of cloth from Huddersfield and the Scottish Borders.
2024-11-15
The Editors Who Shaped Twentieth-Century Fiction From Behind the Scenes
Maxwell Perkins at Charles Scribner's Sons received F.
2024-11-12
On Finding Philosophy in the Produce Aisle
Consider the avocado.
2024-11-12
How the Photograph Album Became a Vanishing Art
In 1888, George Eastman introduced the Kodak camera with the slogan You press the button, we do the rest.
2024-11-10
Why We Keep Returning to the Novels of John le Carré
George Smiley first appeared in Call for the Dead in 1961, a small, bespectacled, cuckolded intelligence officer who bore no resemblance to James Bond.
2024-11-08
What Magic Realism Offers the Practical Man
Gabriel Garcia Marquez once described magic realism not as fantasy but as an enlargement of reality.
2024-10-30
The Architecture of Concert Halls and Why It Matters to Every Note
When the Berliner Philharmonie opened in 1963, its vineyard-style seating arrangement, designed by Hans Scharoun, placed the orchestra at the centre of the audience rather than at one end.
2024-10-30
How One Film Festival Changed Independent Cinema Forever
The Sundance Film Festival, founded by Robert Redford in 1978 as the Utah/US Film Festival and renamed in 1991, did not merely showcase independent film — it created the market for it.
2024-10-21
Richard Avedon and the Photograph That Changed Fashion
In 1955, Richard Avedon photographed the model Dovima standing between two elephants at the Cirque d'Hiver in Paris, wearing a Dior evening gown designed by Yves Saint Laurent.
2024-10-17